IV. Conclusions and future work

III. Experiments and Results

We have performed five in vivo porcine animal tests with our device. A laparoscopic surgeon (Fowler) used this device to perform a number of surgical procedures, including cholecystectomy, appendectomy, running (measuring) the bowel, suturing, and nephrectomy (kidney removal). Since this test animal species does not have an appendix as a human, resecting part of the colon was used to simulate an appendectomy. We present results from two of the tests below.

[Some details are omitted]

This paper describes a new fully insertable robotic surgical imaging device. The device is part of an effort to create totally insertable surgical imaging systems which do not require a dedicated surgical port, and allow more flexibility and DOF's for viewing. The device has controllable pan/tilt axes, and has been used in-vivo animal experiments which included cholecystectomy, appendectomy, running the bowel, suturing, and nephrectomy. The results suggest that the device is:

• Easier and more intuitive to use than a standard laparoscope.
• Joystick operation requires no specialized operator training.
• Field of view and access to relevant regions of the body superior to a standard laparoscope using a single port.

Time to perform procedures was better or equivalent to a standard laparoscope.

We believe these insertable platforms will be an integral part of future surgical systems. The platforms can be used with tooling as well as imaging systems, allowing many surgical procedures to be done using such a platform. The system can be extended to a multi-functional surgical robot with detachable end-effectors (grasper, cutting, dissection and scissor). Because the systems are insertable, a single surgical port can be used to introduce multiple imaging and tooling platforms into a patient. In addition, we have built our camera/lens/lighting package in a modular manner, allowing us to design a 2 camera system that can provide stereo 3D views of the site.

One of our design goals is to simplify the operation and control of the imaging system. One possible approach to controlling the cameras would be to use a hybrid controller, which allows the surgeon to control some of the degrees-of-freedom (DOF) of the device and an autonomous sys­tem, which controls the remaining DOF. For example, the autonomous system can control pan/tilt on the camera to keep a surgeon-identified organ in view, while the surgeon simultaneously may translate the camera to obtain a better viewing angle - all the while keeping the organ centered in the viewing field. We have developed hybrid controllers and mechanisms similar to this for robotic work-cell inspection [27] and believe we can transfer these methods for use with this device.

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